Patriot Viper Series Tri Channel DDR3 PC3 10666 3x2 GB Review

Testing:

When it comes time to purchase your new memory modules, most people look to review sites to get a good idea on the performance capabilities of the memory they want to buy. Why, you ask? So they don't have to go through the endless buy it and return or sell it routine to find the set of their dreams. Hey, we do it for you! How? By testing the memory with a series of benchmarks that show some of the capabilities of the system memory. Synthetic benchmarks as well as real gameplay are used to show the capabilities. Also, there are comparisons to other performance modules, just so that this is not a one-sided affair. That just would not do, and offers up only the knowledge of what the featured product can do.

CPU-Z: This application shows us the settings that we have chosen in the BIOS. Items shown in this application include CPU speed and bus settings, motherboard manufacturer, BIOS revisions, memory timings, and SPD chip information.

Task Manager: We use this utility to show physical memory, kernel memory, page file, and processor usage.

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Core i7 Extreme 965 209x18

Memory: Patriot Viper Series PC3 10666 9-9-8-24 835 MHz 1.68 volts

With stock latencies at 9-9-9-24, I had to find out just how tight the timings would go at the factory default voltages. By manually adjusting the timings and setting the voltage to the 1.5 volt JEDEC spec voltage the modules easily ran timings equal to the Qimonda 3x1GB set. To get the modules higher, I just kept increasing the bclock frequency upward until the system would not boot. I then adjusted the timings and voltage of the modules and pushed further until I finally hit the wall at a 209 bclock frequency. Adjusting the voltage up to 1.7 volts did not allow for an increase any higher without failing memtest. Since the timings were loose at the low end, I kept the timings at the defaults for overclocking since additional voltage did not allow for any tightening of the latencies. All said and done, an increase of 169MHz on the memory without a severe increase in the supply voltage to the DIMMs should offer a nice performance boost for real world applications and gaming.